Monday, March 28, 2011

Last night I got out my most recent Key Ingredients kit from Taylored Expressions to play with. I hadn't even opened it yet! Boy, do I like this month's papers from My Minds Eye that Taylor choose for us.

This layout is based on the latest FTL 133. My card may not be considered so "Clean and Simple" however, as I did quite a bit of cutting out, layering and sewing.

Supplies

Stamps: Much Appreciated by Taylored Expressions

Card stock: TE yellow, SU taken with teal and naturals white

Patterned paper: Stella Rose-Gerty by My Minds Eye

Ink: memento tuxedo black, SU taken with teal, so saffron, and real red

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Yikes! Talk about doing something outside your comfort zone. I have not picked up my Prismacolor pencils in years. YEARS! I forgot that I even had the collection that I do. :D

What brought this on you may wonder? I decided to play along again with the "Follow the Recipe" challenge at the Catered Crop blog. I did FTR#7 and had fun putting all of the ingredients together. (I used that card for my mom's birthday card and she loved it.) So, one of the ingredients for FTR#8 is Prismacolor pencils. After hunting them down in my closet, I gave them a try and colored this cute, cute Mo Manning image. No doubt that I need some practice, but, maybe not too shabby in the end. Some of the other recipe ingredients are patterned papers with small prints and stripes, greens, blues, browns for colors, spring and child/animal themes, stitching, shapes like ovals or die cuts, embellishments like pearls, flowers, and buttons. There are a few others. For a complete list of ingredients for the FTR#8, check out the Catered Crop blog.

I've used this week's Sweet Sunday Sketch challenge #110 for the layout. Unlike Jen, I like these angled panels a lot. (Check out Jen's blog here for a good chuckle, and a gorgeous card). Anyway. . . here's my final product:

Saturday, March 26, 2011

It's super-duper that Taylor is back with her Friday Sketch Challenges. Here's this week's sketch, TESC # 135.

I made two cards to celebrate the TESC return to Fridays.

First up is a happy little doggie with big dreams about big bones.

I pulled out some of my left over papers and supplies from the Pet's Place Project Pantry from last summer to put this one together. Those bone paper clips are so cute don't you think? The thought bubbles are Die-namics dies cut from more mustard card stock and sponged with brown ink. The bones and paw print border are stickers from the Max and Whiskers line. The kraft background is stamped with the TE stitched background stamp and embossed with a cuttlebug EF.

The second card is a sweet treat of yummy, sparkly cupcakes.

These cupcakes are frosted with glitter and sparkly fluff. The cupcake papers are all paper pieced. The background turquoise paper is embossed with the TE scallops and circles impressions die and cut out with a big scalloped square Nestie. The patterned papers and cupcake brad are again from an old Project Pantry set.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Welcome to my stop along the Taylored Expressions' March blog hop. Today we are celebrating Spring. Now that it's warmer weather, I thought it might be fun to take a "Sweet" spin on this cute pink scooter from Taylor's Feelin' Groovy stamp set. I live in San Diego, so it's scooter weather pretty much year round :) but, I know many of you have had more than your share of snow this winter and are ready for the warmer temps that Spring will bring to you.

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Here is Sankari's fun sketch.

I wanted to do a little more stamping on my card, so I inked up one of the daisy flower stamps from the set with two different colors to make a wall of flowers on the vertical panel. The centers of the flowers are dotted with yellow Stickles. To add more "Spring" feel to the card, I used pastel striped paper for the top three horizontal pieces and wrapped them with pink baker's twine, then added pink paper flowers. The pink card stock background is embossed with Taylor's Scallops and Circles Impressions Plate die.

The scooter was stamped twice, cut out then paper pieced with more pink paper. Bright pink Stickles are added over the pink paper to give it that shinny metallic look. An orange rhinestone daisy is glued over the the stamped daisy image. For even more sparkle, the headlight and the hubcaps are colored with a silver Spica pen. The tires and seat are colored with Copics. The scooter is placed on a classic circle Nestie sponged with cantaloupe ink, then layered over yellow card stock cut with a Lacy circle Nestie.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

I picked up some very thin cork sheets a few weeks ago at one of my local stamp stores. I wanted them to use with my TE and Die-namics scalloped border dies. When I saw Karen's Sweet Sunday Sketch #108 this morning, I had in my mind to make rolled roses out of it for an "organic" look and feel.

I have to confess, this card did not go together as easily as I expected. It turns out that it's not as easy as it may seem to roll very thin cork. (it crumbles) But persistence paid off and in the end, I think the look is pretty cool.

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Unfortunately, I need a sympathy card for one of my co-workers who lost her father this past Friday. This one will be in the mail to her tomorrow to let her know I'm thinking about her and to give my condolences.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

I have a good friend who e mailed me earlier this week and asked if could make her 5 baby cards. I never make baby cards, or at least haven't made one in, like, forever. Of course, I said yes. Any chance to do stamping is welcome. :) One of the recipients is having twin boys and she requested to have a card for each baby. I decided to use a similar theme and papers, but a totally different layout on each.

I pulled out my TE Beary Special stamp set to make the cards. I paper pieced the dog and the bear on each card. The paper is some retired SU DSP from last year.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Today's card I made to participate in the "Follow the Recipe" challenge (FTR #7) on the Catered Crop blog. This concept looked like fun and so I decided to give it a try. Here's the card that I came up with:

Sunday, March 6, 2011

It's Sunday and that means it's time again for Karen Giron's Sweet Sunday Sketch challenge #107. Yikes, Karen! What's up with all these little squares again? lol. Not to worry, I took the easy way out and used one of my SU square punches. It worked pretty well and the sketch turned out to be a fun one to play with.

I used another new stamp set that I bought this past week from Our Craft Lounge. (if the doc doesn't let me go back to work soon, I'm going to be broke) I seem to be into birdies lately and when I saw this Tweet Thang set, I had to have it.

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I used some patterned papers from the TE Garden Party Project Pantry from last summer and decided to put them on craft card stock keeping with the nature theme. I probably spent more time on deciding if the stripped paper squares should be placed vertical or horizontal. Isn't it strange what we get hung up on in our creating? Since I'm using craft card stock, I'm going to submit this to Jeanie's Thats Krafty Thrusday challenge also.

Since I brought it up, my arm is doing really well. Just no lifting yet. I do have a Dr's. appointment tomorrow morning and I'm expecting to get my "back to work" release. I'm really ready to get back. If released, I will have been off just shy of two months, which is one month less than the norm with my type of surgery. So, that's something good.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

I remembered that it was the first Saturday of the month, and that means another Sketch For You To Try over at Jen's blog. I thought this looked like a really fun layout to work with, and I did quite enjoy it. I didn't have any Amber Ink stamps, so I went to take a look at their site, and purchased one of the digi stamps to work with. This cute little bunny is called Love Bunny-Flowered and she reminded me of spring.

I printed her out onto some SU whisper white CS, colored her with Copics and cut her out. I used some dimensionals to pop her up over the grass I made with the Die-namics grass die.

I ran across The Play Date Cafe blog the other day while surfing around blogland. Their latest challenge, PDCC71, is to use black and white with a "splash" of color. It caught my fancy, so I decided to see what I could do. After looking through my inventory of stamps, I settled on a Pure Innocence set. Next, I went looking for a sketch. Naturally, the MFT Wednesday sketch #9 seemed appropriate.

I love black and pink together, and with a PI girl, pink definitely works. Here is everything put together:

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There is a fair amount of bling in this card, from the pink rhinestone flower in her hair to the centers of the flowers in the pot, and I love how it looks. Missy's dress is paper pieced. The rest of her is colored with Copics. Her sweater is colored with the Blossom Spica pen for sparkle as well.

I debated about piercing around the circle to match the dots in the pink ribbon, but decided that there was enough texture already.